So with Google + going away april 2nd…what will happen to this group?
Not certain moving forward. I am still weighing our options. Reddit is one option, one of the many forums is another, i didn’t like the mewe interface much, and I don’t know if I am up to the task of a roll-your-own solution (due to keeping up on security related issues). We still have some time, and I am open to suggestions. Nice thing is that thanks to @mcdanlj we have all our historical G+ content out on gitlabs.
@Ben_Delarre suggested https://spectrum.chat which was acquired by github before the Microsoft purchase and is open source.
https://spectrum.chat
And wikifactory looks good because it is designed with file share collaboration and 3d CAD model web viewer integrated:
I just wish it had a mobile app.
https://wikifactory.com
Worth looking at discourse too, comparing to spectrum. Could give you the ability to control destiny, and the backlog of G+ posts could be imported at such time as an import tool is written.
@funinthefalls spun up a discourse instance for Maker forums, I’d recommend talking to him about going there.
I would be more than happy to give you a top level category with all of your current sub categories. You can have a look at http://forum.makerforums.info The K40 G+ community and the ChiliPeppr community have already moved over, with a few others about to come. The more the merrier, it is a nice thing to have one login for all your maker community needs.
@funinthefalls I signed up! I also see a “Download all” button that looks like it would make it possible for me as a user to download some sort of an archive of content I’ve contributed, which makes me more comfortable about contributing. I don’t suppose anyone has written an importer into Discourse for the Friends+Me Google+ Exporter JSON files. I wonder how hard it is for someone who has never written Ruby… 
Might be easier for me to massage the data with my existing script to match input expectations for an existing importer than to learn yet another language. Have you played with any of the importers?
@Eclsnowman , what do you think about the UI there? It seems modern enough and Discourse is open source and actively developed, which addresses some of the concerns about ongoing supportability and being trapped in a walled garden (out of the frying pan and into the fire).
…Thinking about the question that way helped me find https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import_scripts/json_generic.rb — this doesn’t look crazy hard. @Eclsnowman I’d give about 90% odds I would get an importer working, even without Ruby experience. Half the work is probably setting up a local Discourse instance to test against.
@mcdanlj @funinthefalls looks like a good option (I like opensource, I like portable for future comparability). I have never interfaced with discourse… But it would be nice not to be an island onto ourselves…and lots of friendly and familiar faces.
Is there a good mobile UI? Or app?
There is an android app that I am aware of, not sure for apple. But you can set your preferences to be for mobile in your user account. (I have not used the mobile view as of yet, only desktop mode, I don’t have data on my phone plan, I am a cheap old fart that uses his phone just to talk…lol)
@Eclsnowman I started the forums so that no group would have to be, as you put it, “an island onto ourselves” One login gives you access to all the groups, and each group has moderators. I will moderate the moderators so that there is a healthy dialog between the groups, and not let it stray too far either way from a respectful, but easygoing place. We could set it up so you have all the same sub categories you have now, or add or take away from them as you want. It would be very quick to get you set up. And it is financially stable, I have set aside funding for 2 years from one of my companies, and will be opening a not for profit maker store on the main URL to help defray costs for the future after that. I chose discourse for 2 reasons…open source, and a slick modern interface that is so much better than all the basic web site forums.
@funinthefalls FWIW the https://www.hobby-machinist.com/forums/ forum that I’ve been participating in is surviving long term on paid memberships that show as badges. It’s an alternative to your maker store idea that can work when enough people contribute, especially with multiple related subforums. The badges are part of the transparency, and they recently also described their implementation and ongoing costs.
@Eclsnowman It looks like the mobile interface to Discourse is performant and responsive. I’ve been playing with it successfully on Firefox on Android at any rate. The android app is just a webview wrapper, so you are better off using the browser directly, whether you use chrome or firefox.
Discourse lets you post HTML, markdown, and BBcode, so denizens of all common forum software should feel at home. I’m hoping that this means that an importer can use the markdown/HTML translation I did for the static site with no changes. It seems possible.
I saw the smoothie group might migrate to discourse.
Edit: Maybe not. Somebody had suggested it though.
@mcdanlj Would you be able to archive the K40 Laser Engraving group for us? I would love to see all that knowledge preserved somehow. And do you think it will be possible to someday have that info imported into Discourse? Thanks in advance for any help you can render.
I’ve messaged Michael for assistance as well for the Cohesion3D Group 
Although in my case I’m more interested in having it as a separate static site I can use for reference, and I do not want it cluttering up my shiny new Discourse.
I would be fine with a searchable static site, something Google could crawl and keep up the good seo the group currently enjoys.